March 14, 1862 to July 7, 1862

As part of the Union’s effort to create a blockade of the South and to execute tactical operations, the Rebels and the Yanks fought on the sea and on major rivers. On May 10, 1862, a Confederate force attacked a section of the Union fleet on the Mississippi River near Fort Wright, Tennessee. According to The Presbyterian Banner, a newspaper in Pittsburgh, eight Rebel gunboats attacked...

Millions of unsettled acres remained in the west by the 1850s, and the Republicans viewed the land as an opportunity to offer it to settlers for next to nothing. Republicans drafted a homestead bill, but southern senators immediately rejected it. One southerner explained it "would prove a most efficient ally for Abolition by encouraging and stimulating the settlement of free farms with Yankees and...

Margaret Ann Meta Morris, (1810-1881) was the wife of a rice planter. She resided in coastal South Carolina with her family. She kept a personal diary in which she focused on topics such as her family being ill, historical events, plantation life, her children’s involvement in the Civil War, and her teaching efforts. The entry on May 12, 1862, describes what she endured while she and her family...

In the middle of the night Richard, the Fearn's son, awoke his parents to tell them that New Orleans had fallen to the Yankees. During breakfast this unsettling news was reinforced as a man rode by the Fearn home yelling, The Yankees are coming It was clear to the Fearns that they had to leave their home as soon as possible. In the panic to depart, Mrs. Fearn was too distraught. She could barely...

Every year the Fearn plantation threw a ball in honor of the magnitude of work that had been done the year prior. The slaves put much effort into the night to make it the happiest of times. Slaves on the plantation looked forward to the ball each year. This year the ball fell on a beautiful night. The Fearns were the last to leave for the ball. As they followed the path to get there, a large slave...

The contraband only spent a short time working for James D. Templeton's brigade before his death, but in that time the ex-slave managed to leave a lasting impression. Templeton was a young Union soldier from Savannah, Ohio who took part in several major battles of the Civil War, including Antietam. He spent much of his first two years in the mountains of West Virginia, as the horn player in...

For one of the first times in American history, the women of New Orleans were taking the protection of their city and its reputation into their own hands. Spitting and yelling at soldiers from the north and refusing to even acknowledge their presence in the streets, even when the soldiers were offering the women assistance. There were many hostile feelings between the north and the...

Shouts and cheers filled the air as the words The Washington Artillery is going to war hummed through the streets. A telegram was sent by L. Pope Walker, the Secretary of War, to the battalion of artillery stationed in New Orleans, Louisiana. In preparation for the journey to Lynchburg, Virginia, contributions of money and clothing were raised by the women. Without any expense from the state or...

On the day of April 29, 1862, Timothy Webster became the first person executed during the Civil War for acts of espionage. Convicted four days prior to his execution, a court-martial in Richmond, Virginia ruled that Webster, an “alien enemy,” should “suffer death by hanging.” The New York Times republished an original article from the Richmond Dispatch relaying the information...

The Civil War was raging on a day in early April in 1862 when Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan and his Union troops marched south from Fort Monroe. On his way south he and his army ran into a small group of Confederate troops led by Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder in Yorktown Virginia. Magruder put on a show and made McClellan think that he had a very large army behind him therefore encouraging McClellan...